Mobile company rejects waste liquids from coal ash landfill

MOBILE, Ala. -- Liquid Environmental Solutions in Mobile announced Friday afternoon that the company would no longer accept shipments of waste liquids from the Perry County landfill.

The company had planned to treat the waste to remove contaminants and send it to the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System for disposal.

"While Liquid Environmental Solutions properly accepted, tested and treated the non-hazardous Perry County landfill wastewater, we have decided to stop accepting it," read a statement from the company. "We take our responsibility of corporate citizenship in Mobile very seriously and want to diligently work with the community to ensure local concerns are adequately addressed."

It had accepted five shipments of "leachate" - the liquid that collects in the bottom of a landfill.

The Perry County landfill is the disposal site for coal ash spilled after an accident at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant. The associated leachate contains mercury, arsenic, cadmium and other contaminants.

ADEM officials said the Mobile facility, which accepted its last Perry County shipment Jan. 27, is permitted to accept up to 100,000 gallons of the leachate per day. It is unclear what will happen with the material now.

Neither the Alabama Department of Environmental Management nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could say how many gallons of leachate are being sucked out of the Perry County landfill in central Alabama each day, or how much is being sent to various facilities.

Eddie Dorsett, who manages Perry County's Arrowhead landfill for Phill-Con Services, declined to answer Press-Register questions about the leachate, including how much is generated daily.

Instead, a public relations firm provided a statement Friday that read, in part, "We send leachate to various qualified facilities across the Southeast that meet appropriate permit requirements."

The amount of leachate generated each day depends on several factors, including the weather, according to the statement.

John Wathen, with the Friends of Hurricane Creek environmental group, said he has counted as many as 20 tanker trucks a day leaving the landfill. Tanker trucks carry between 5,000 and 9,000 gallons.

The coal ash arrives daily aboard more than 100 rail cars from Tennessee. Up to 30 percent of the waste in each rail car is liquid, according to a TVA document.

In interviews conducted Thursday and Friday, EPA and ADEM officials said the leachate has been sent to several places for treatment, including Mobile, Demopolis and "somewhere in Georgia."

Scott Hughes, with ADEM, said shipments to Mobile were in compliance.

"As for the deliveries to other facilities, that's what we're investigating," he said. "We are trying to determine where the leachate is going, what quantities are going, and whether there needs to be any enforcement action by the department."

He said the landfill has applied for permits that would allow it to dispose of the material in both the Demopolis and Marion municipal sewer systems.

A lawsuit was filed in the fall regarding shipments to the Marion plant. EPA officials suggested the material be sent elsewhere at that time, according to agency officials.

In December, published reports quoted EPA officials saying that the leachate was being sent to Demopolis for treatment.

Hughes said Friday that the Demopolis plant lost its operating permit two months earlier, in October.

Demopolis officials declined to answer Press-Register questions about its operations.

Hughes said the Demopolis facility "would certainly be opening itself for enforcement actions" if it accepted the waste without an operating permit.